Strange & Offbeat News -- ScienceDaily

A smiling lens: 'Happy face' galaxy cluster reveals arcs caused by strong gravitational lensing Posted: 10 Feb 2015 01:30 PM PST An image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows what appears to be a smiling galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849. In the case of this "happy face," the two eyes are very bright galaxies and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.

Arachnid Rapunzel: Researchers Spin Spider Silk Proteins Into Artificial Silk Posted: 10 Feb 2015 11:17 AM PST Incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk is a lightweight, biodegradable wonder material with numerous potential biomedical applications. But although humans have been colonizing relatively placid silkworms for thousands of years, harvesting silk from territorial and sometimes cannibalistic spiders has proven impractical. Instead, labs hoping to harness spider silk's mechanical properties are using its molecular structure as a template for their own biomimetic silks.

Bringing texture to your flat touchscreen with virtual bumps Posted: 09 Feb 2015 01:14 PM PST What if the touchscreen of your smartphone or tablet could touch you back? Researchers now report a discovery that provides insight into how the brain makes sense of data from fingers. When people draw their fingers over a flat surface with two 'virtual bumps,' the researchers found that, under certain circumstances, the subjects feel only one bump when there really are two. And the researchers can explain why the brain comes to this conclusion.

'Stressed' young bees could be the cause of colony collapse Posted: 09 Feb 2015 01:12 PM PST Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a major threat to bee colonies around the world and affects their ability to perform vital human food crop pollination. It has been a cause of urgent concern for scientists and farmers around the world for at least a decade but a specific cause for the phenomenon has yet to be conclusively identified. Pressure on young bees to grow up too fast could be a major factor in explaining the disastrous declines in bee populations seen worldwide.

Earliest evidence of large-scale human-produced air pollution in South America found Posted: 09 Feb 2015 01:11 PM PST Researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence of widespread, human-produced air pollution in South America -- from the Spanish conquest of the Inca.